Online Fight Escalates Into Legal Battle Between Birth Bloggers

Posted onJanuary 28, 2013 9:49 ambypartypants

Gina of The Feminist Breeder, has haters and don’t you forget it, is apparently facing a lawsuit from another birth blogger. Dr. Amy at The Skeptical OB has informed the internet that she has filed against Gina for “unlawfully sent false notices (called “takedown notices”) under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and for tortious interference with my contracts with webhosts”.

The history of their public online battle was summarized by GOMIer Viola_Aurea:

OK, so Gina wrote this post about how she’s learned soooooooooo much after being a doula at 20 births.

Dr. Amy responded with this post, basically saying, “If you’ve learned this much after 20, what do you think you’d learn after a few thousand?” It really wasn’t terribly mean, by Dr. Amy standards.

Dr. Amy then wrote about it (and included the photo, which is now gone) in this post.

Gina THEN proceeded to scream “Copyright infringement!!!!” and send Dr. Amy a letter demanding money, which she wrote about in this post. (The letter was originally posted but later deleted.)

Dr. Amy’s husband, who is a very big-deal lawyer, wrote back to Gina and told her she didn’t have a case. Gina then repeatedly filed DMCA takedown notices to Dr. Amy’s host (and then her new one, after she switched hosts), which she detailed here. She also started a legal fund so she could go after Amy. It was VERY clearly an attempt to abuse DMCA in order to shut Amy up. Gina was also encouraging other people to fill out forms saying that Amy had “stolen” (aka quoted, with proper citation) their stories.

From what I can sort out (so sorry, so not a lawyer), Dr. Amy’s suit appears to primarily seek to stop Gina from continuing to chase her site off the internet. Dr. Amy states:

I have sued only Gina. I have absolutely no desire to sue anyone else who may have submitted a frivolous DMCA complaint or has given Gina authority to file one on her behalf. However, I will avail myself of any remedies the law accords me, should I deem it necessary.

It is highly likely that I will have to move my site to yet another host. As I have said before, The Skeptical OB will be here next week, next month and next year. Nevertheless, having to move hosts again — thanks to Gina’s malicious attacks — is a burden neither I, nor my readers, should have to undergo.

There doesn’t seem to be any response on TFB at this time. It will be interesting to watch this unfold, and to see what implications it could have for a person’s right to comment on publicly available blog content.

It used to say something with some actual swearing in it and then it got mocked in the gomi forums for being immature/unprofessional. Then it was magically changed (even though she doesn’t read here of course).I don’t remember what exactly it said.

Gina’s comment on the UH article is priceless. She’s as touchy as a scalded cat, and even the people that like her are siding with the OB. Nothing undermines your credentials like an internet fuh-reakout.

I mean, if I was going to pay money out of pocket to have somebody attend the birth of my child (a doula), I would definitely do a Google search on them first. And if the person came across as seriously crazy on her personal blog, I certainly wouldn’t hire her to keep me calm during labor and delivery.

Maybe that’s why she’s only done 20 in the how many years has she been doing this now? I wish my job only required me to work one day every couple of months. Though I suspect for her this is more of a hobby.

Well, based on my experience of the interwebs there sure seem to be a lot of uneducated crazies out there so quid pro plenty of clients for Gina. Unless she self destructs in a flaming ball of crazy herself. Could happen.

No, it’s a lawsuit over someone (and her pals) abusing DMCA in order to take a website offline. I don’t think Dr. Amy should be giving this crazy person any more attention on her blog, but I support the lawsuit 100%.

While not a regular reader of her blog, I did read an article that Dr. Amy wrote that seriously changed my perspective on ceasarean births. Her post/article was in reference to a mommy blogger who was whining all over the internet that she was “broken” and couldn’t have the vag birth that would somehow magically protect her from postpartum depression.
It really forced me to look at myself and see how ridiculous I had been earlier this year when I faced a similar situation. It’s kind of sad when women in developed countries feel like they are not getting the “experience” they deserve, while women in other areas of the world face the (much more legitimate) fear of death during childbirth. It made me feel like an asshole.

So, I would probably take Dr. Amy’s side over a doula. Even if said doula had the wisdom of twenty births.

So agree. Birth is not about your “experience.” Less than impressed with that blog I read where the woman cried for three days and “mourned” not being able to have a VBAC. Dude. Not about you. Get the fuck over it. Sorry to be harsh, but be glad that you can go to a hospital and access the medical care that will deliver your child into this world. This strikes me as the height of self-absorption. It irks me to no end. Yup, hospitals aren’t perfect. But hey. It’s a hospital. And you get to go. CLAP. Privilege. Luxury. You’re welcome for having the random good fortune of being born into the lucky slice of world population.

Exactly. Giving birth is about the baby, not the mom. That’s why it’s called GIVING birth.

I had serious complications during all of my pregnancies. I ended up alive with two live babies, but it was not easy to achieve that outcome. I resent the hell out of people like TFB who seem to think my birth experience was somehow less-than because I needed doctors and machines and scalpels. Fuck that. Those scalpels were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’m incredibly lucky to have had access to them.

But giving birth is about the mom, too. That’s why we talk about the maternal mortality rate AND the neonatal mortality rate. There are several studies being conducted in Europe looking into how MOTHERS are affected by their birth experiences because, hey, someone noticed that it can make a difference! To imply that it’s selfish to care about the experience because other women don’t have access to hospitals is a straw man argument.

Not to mention, I find the “healthy baby, suck it up” argument to be one of the most condescending ones out there. I’ve worked in reproductive rights and am now in graduate school for Public Health and to me it’s akin to “I raised a baby by myself with no money, so what’s the big deal if women can’t have abortions?”. Who is anyone else to say whether someone else’s experience or disappointment is valid (that goes for TFB and her minions, too)? When the argument is made that women shouldn’t bitch about their experiences because HEALTHY BABY! it’s the same exact thing TFB does.

And I also had a life-threatening complication that required medical intervention and am forever grateful for it.

Listen, if you can have a healthy birth at home with a midwife, or in a plastic pool, or whatever, great. I don’t care. It’s actually none of my business.

I just find the implication that people who couldn’t or didn’t choose that type of experience as less-than is wrong (at least in my case). I fine with the experience I had lots of people worked really hard to take care of me. It was a good experience for me.

I object to the judginess, too. I was a La Leche League leader, so I saw it a lot and always shut it down when it happened during meetings (questioning a mom who decides on a RCS instead of a VBAC is not cool), but I think it’s just as judgmental and harmful to say that experience shouldn’t matter. If it didn’t, I don’t think my FB feed would have lit up like it did this morning and last night from a certain storyline in a certain show. What we go through affects our parenting and our ability to engage as people and that’s all valid. It’s when we declare ourselves the arbiters of what is valid and right regarding emotion that we get into trouble.

Lady Amalthea, I agree. If you have the opportunity to control the circumstances of giving birth, you have every right to want to do that. I don’t have any issue at all with people wanting to do that, or talking about their experience, or whatever. I only object when they talk about the experience *I* had in judgmental terms.

All else being equal, it is important that the experience of birth be as pleasant and stress-free as possible. Unfortunately biology sometimes intervenes, and when the chips are down, the life of mother and/or baby cannot be put at risk for fear that the mother may be disappointed or even traumatised by her birth experience. I think that many of the people who rail against “birthrape” and “unnecessareans” have an unrealistic idea of whether all things are equal or not,

Grad school didn’t teach you that the maternal and infant death rate encompass maternal and infant deaths up to a year after the birth, regardless of cause? They aren’t an accurate measure of actual deaths of mothers and babies BECAUSE of complications of labor and birth.

Actually, maternal mortality in the US is maternal death within 1 year of birth/termination. Other countries use other metrics. Also, perinatal mortality makes it harder to fudge the numbers by counting sick/small babies as stillbirths (and thus avoid having them as a part of neonatal deaths). Some countries have been known to not count some premies as live births, artificially deflating their neonatal death statistic.

Also, because in the US we have MUCH MUCH higher levels of assisted reproductive technology and methods that are allowing much older women and women who are otherwise very unhealthy the privilege of having a baby (not to even mention that a lack of universal healthcare in this country means that many young, uneducated mothers don’t have much in the way of prenatal care), we also have a much higher percentage of seriously sick preemies. Then, we also have amazing neonatology technology in this country, so we recuscitate babies at gestational ages that in the majority of countries would be automatically left to die–many of those babies do end up either dying after a couple days or having serious birth defects, but our country’s health system has a motto that if the baby even has a chance, it is worth the $3 million that it will cost to try to save a 24 weeker. All these factors DIRECTLY cause our infant mortality/maternal mortality rates to be much higher than in many other developed countries–despite the fact that these factors have nothing to do with “unnecessareans” or “cascades of interventions,” etc.

The whole point is that in the grand scheme of things, what you felt about your birth experience doesn’t matter. Without any medical help, one in ten women will die in childbirth. Seriously. This is the reality faced by women all throughout history and most women in the world right now in the present day. Crying because you had to have a c-section that saved yours and your baby’s life indicates you have no perspective and no appreciation for how very lucky you are. Now, I am sympathetic to women who want to have as happy a birth as they can as long as they aren’t making dangerous choices, but here’s the thing – the home births that women like Gina encourage is NOT safe. Did you know that even among extremely low risk women, the baby is three times more likely to die? And that among women of more normal risk levels, they’re 30 times more likely die? And high risk women, oh man, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could encourage someone to do something so dangerous, but people like Gina do. Dr. Amy runs her blog solely to try and get justice for all the lives needlessly lost to home birth by educating women so they will hopefully not make the same mistake those other moms did. Go check out her other blog, hurtbyhomebirth.com, to see the stories of babies who paid the ultimate price because people like Gina duped their moms into thinking birth complications were rare and home birth is a safe choice.

@ cankles – me too. My first pregnancy I had severe pre-e and HELLP so bad I started bleeding under my skin and out of my nose. My second the baby got stuck in the birth canal. I would have died without my c-sections, and with the first even surviving the c-section was not a guarantee. As Dr. Amy likes to say, you’re only low-risk until you aren’t. The “it can’t happen to me” mentality of many homebirthers is astoundingly ignorant.

I am all about women having choices and some measure of control over their own experiences in life, etc. But I still reject this perspective. The birth of your child is about your child. It IS. Yes, I think it should be comfortable for you, the mother, too. But it’s about–very literally–bringing your child into this world and you surviving the encounter intact, body and mind. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want a professional who has invested their youth, their working lives and very often their family lives into learning about how to accomplish that. Maybe it’s because my aunt is an OBGYN or I did pre-med as an undergrad–whatever. I have an appreciation for the sacrifices it takes to become a doctor. And no midwifery on the evenings and weekends will substitute for that. As someone who was marginalized by the US health care system, I deeply appreciate access to medical care. And it bothers me to see women spurn it as if they have no need for the gains that decades of gov’t investment in medical science has yielded. This shit ain’t free. Not everyone gets it. But you do–just because you happen to live in the US, and you happen to be alive right now. So use it. Quit putting your “need” for a pleasant “experience” first. Or don’t, but don’t complain when your opinions are challenged by reality or judge anyone else who does act on the basis of solid medical science. You know, the same medical science that you have no problem turning to when you have something life-threatening like cancer. (That’s a generic you, not personal btw).

She then asked me if I had given any thought to my Birth Expeeeerience. I said ‘Yes, but since it was 30 years ago, I don’t remember much of it.’

If a woman wants to give birth hanging upside down in a hut specially constructed out of unicorn horns, go for it. Don’t claim, however, that she’s more educated about birth than the one who elects to give birth in hospital.

But using a midwife isn’t necessarily rejecting all medical science. If you hire a midwife who follows the standard lab schedule, requires sonos, uses a Doppler, is trained in NRP, carries resucitation equipment and medications, and collaborates with a physician, you are still utilizing modern science and what medical research has brought you. Midwifery is growing and changing just like all obstetric care is, which is a good thing.

There doesn’t need to be so much judgement against women for birthing where they choose to, whether that’s in a hospital or at home.

gina and her minions can judge the hell out of me all they want, but if i’d had a homebirth with my second child, my son would have been stillborn and i very well could have died along with him. birth your child however you want, i don’t care – but don’t even try to make me feel like a lesser person because mine was required numerous interventions and ended in an emergency cesarean section. even my first daughter had to be vacuum-extracted, and by the time i got around to my third child, they advised me to just have a scheduled cesarean, and after the first two experiences i couldn’t disagree with them. in the end i got to bring my son home from the hospital, as well as my two healthy girls, and for me, that was all that mattered. i was also grateful to have had access to the care i did.

My thoughts exactly! It’s easy to get so wrapped up in yourself when you’re pregnant and your biggest concern is whether or not L&D will be everything you want it to be. It’s nice to hear that someone’s perspective can be changed, because seriously, imagine explaining this dilemma to a pregnant woman in a third world country who has to walk miles and miles to the closest hospital and even then she probably won’t get proper medical care.

Never heard of either of these women, but I would love to read this article. Can you provide a link? I had an unexpected Caesarian due to tranverse position and – so sorry, so wrapped up in myself – am having a hard time getting over it. I love my kitten more than anything and am so happy she arrived safely, but it’s taking me time to come to terms with everything that goes along with a caesarian. Sounds like this article could provide me with some much needed perspective…

If you want additional perspective my baby died for lack of a c-section. She had the cord around her neck but the nurse who was monitoring the labour decided that paging the OB would result in an unnecessary c-section so she did not, even after I asked. She survived a few days, having seizures and enjoying all the tests we did to find out that her brain and other organs were irrevocably and horribly damaged. I totally get that there is more to a delivery than a healthy baby, and I think it is important to mourn the experience you wanted; maybe write a really angry letter and burn it ceremonially, etc. I have no issue with you having feelings. But the broader perspective is, I went home from two hospitals with empty arms and visit a grave site. With my two subsequent deliveries my one goal was everyone to come out healthy, and we did.

Li – thank you for sending over the link. I’m going to read this tonight.

Lexi – I am so, so sorry for your loss. Hearing that brings me to tears. I can’t imagine what you have been through. I know I’m very lucky to have walked away from my birth experience with a healthy baby, and I remind myself that everyday. Ultimately, I knew that my daughter’s health was the number one priority, and so I elected to have a scheduled c section rather than risk a complicated birth. Like I said, it’s taking me time to reconcile my emotions about the whole thing, but stories like yours help me to realize that I should only be grateful, not bitter. Thank you for sharing.

I am so sorry for what you’re going through, Law Offices. I don’t care how anyone rationalizes it, women have irrational feelings around pregnancy and birth. Of course you’re having a hard time getting over it. When it’s basically beaten into your head that the healthiest option for you AND your baby is an unmedicated, vaginal birth it takes an unbelievably secure person not to feel somehow less than when you have a different birth. Your feelings are your feelings and you should not feel guilty about them. I’m sure you can’t control them or, let’s face it, you’d just feel good all the time about everything.

Don’t take my dismissal above personally–I’m just agitated because I never get an outlet for this. And I’m TTC and ppl are already asking me stupid questions.

I don’t begrudge you complex feelings about your birth experience (I’d be less than thrilled to have a c-section for recovery reasons alone). Giving birth is a fundamentally emotional experience by natural design. And I don’t even blame women for getting way too caught up in L&D. Seems normal. But what I don’t like is memorializing the feelings of a moment and applying them to the experience in general. It’s a myopia that prevents women from moving forward and regaining perspective. And I dislike even more this competitive tone to blogging about it: “I mourned the shattering of my ideal for THREE WHOLE DAYS….how long did you mourn yours?” (You must not have wanted it as badly as I did!). Finally, I categorically reject the idealization of the manner in which women give birth. Giving birth is not a value-centric event–it’s a medical event. And the fact that ppl with a very limited medical background are imposing this yardstick of idealism for women to measure themselves against…ugh.

My mother gave birth to all her kids vaginally and breastfed for at least a year. What impacted our adult lives? Not that, since my adopted siblings who were fed dirty BPA-filled formula bottles turned out as healthy as we are. But differences in stability in our environment and educational choices definitely shaped us as adults. I think hyperfocusing on the birth experience detracts from the real factors that shape the wellbeing of a child. I’d like to see women invest that energy into providing stability, etc., in the many years that follow this moment rather than competing over how alert their infant was in the hours post-birth and other distracting “markers.”

I remember really liking Dr. Amy, although I am out of that stage of my life now so I no longer give a crap. I am glad Dr. Amy is out there on the internet, doing her thing, because there is a lot of “natural” (whatever that means) birth propaganda out there, and a check on stuff like that is a good thing imo.

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to put words to for the past few months. All opinions are NOT created equal. And just because social media validates your opinion that you formed after 20 minutes of watching cable TV or listening to idiot talk radio hosts does NOT make it, in fact, valid. Your opinion doesn’t matter until you invest the time it takes to make it valuable. I am so sick of this anti-elite moment in US society. Direct this cynicism to where it belongs–say, Wall Street or Congress–and quit touting this my-down-home-common-sense-and-nature/Jesus-tell-me-so “wisdom.” I live in countries without modern medical and political systems. Spoiler: they suck.

PREACH SISTER. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard in the past few weeks poo-pooing flu shots (and many of them work with me at a medical center, which terrifies me). Look, get one or not, but vaccines SAVE LIVES. They’re not dumb just because you think so.

I can’t even get on the anti anti-vaccine train b/c I won’t stop. All over my fb feed all the time. I was thrilled, THRILLED, to be able to get a flu shot this year. Cuz the last country I lived in didn’t do flu shots. And in the one before that–the US–I couldn’t afford them. So for the first time in my life, I had access to a flu shot. Last winter I had coughing-induced fevers for 13 weeks straight and had to get emergency care in nowhere, Cambodia. This year, I haven’t even gotten a cold. Send your unvaccinated kids over here to SE Asia and we’ll see how long those ‘protected’ immune systems hold up.

Selfish people who make up bullshit reasons to avoid flu vaccines, when really it’s all about how they don’t want a needle or a sore arm for like half a day. They even have intradermal injections now that only itch a little bit so that isn’t even true anymore.
I feel no pity for people who don’t like the needle, since I have to inject myself with immunosuppressing drugs every week. They clearly don’t give a crap about me or people like me with autoimmune or immunodeficiency diseases. I’ve been pissed at all my unvaccinated coworkers hacking away this month.

If you have the flu shot, why are you mad at people that don’t get it though? If you feel you’re protected, I don’t understand how other people’s actions result in illness for you. You do realize that the flu shot doesn’t protect against every strain of the flu right? Even if you have the shot, you can still get it. You know that right?

If she’s immunosuppressed, it means she can’t get the vaccination for safety reasons, because it could be life-threatening for her. People who can’t get vaccinated for some reason depend on everyone around them not getting sick so they never come into contact with the disease. It’s called herd immunity. If 95% of a population is vaccinated, the disease is unlikely to gain enough of a hold to infect the other 5% that can’t be vaccinated.

Vaccines aren’t just about you-as-an-individual, it’s about outcomes in a population. I interact all day long with people–people who might have immunocompromised family members at home, people who may be themselves immunocompromised, people who can get the flu shot but didn’t bother, etc. If I’m vaccinated and I get exposed to a flu strain that I’m immune to, then I don’t shed virus and infect these vulnerable people. If I get exposed to a strain that wasnt in this year’s vaccine, then that sucks, but it may be milder and less infectious so I don’t pass it on to someone’s grandma. Even if the vaccine is only 62% effective, in a population of millions that can make a big difference in public health statistics. It means less lost work and fewer secondary complications in the vulnerable population.

Sorry if this is a vax-threadjack. Back to snarking on TFB I go! It is interesting that there’s an overlap in the home birth and anti-vax communities, but that’s probably a whole ‘nother threadjack.

A child at my son’s preschool has leukemia. The school sent us a very nice email requesting that all children provide complete vaccination records, as the ill child would otherwise have to be kept at home and would not be able to have any contact with his friends. Every last parent, regardless of their personal views on vaccination, complied. Every child was fully vaccinated within the fortnight. It was really moving.

My cousin’s baby nearly died of whooping couch because so many people in their social circle don’t vaccinated because they believe in herd immunity. I.e. they’re all good with everyone else vaccinating so their kids didn’t have to be because they swallowed the vaccines = autism KoolAid.

Their baby spent 10 weeks in intensive care and has significant speech delays as a result of some of the treatment. He’ll be fine, but it would have been a shitload better if he’d never caught it in the first place.

Argh. The whole debate just makes my bloodboil. I also love Dr Amy. I think she’s a breath of fresh air amongst a sea of flabbergasting misinformation about birth and home birth.

Where I live, most people won’t get flu shots, preferring homeopathic remedies. I also have cancer, which I am treating with chemotherapy. Result? Face mask and gloves just to go to the store, I’m a total hermit, and it’s making me crazy!

Yeah, I work in vaccines/public health (which is why it is so wtf that my coworkers haven’t been vaxed). I also understand that taking methotrexate and Enbrel has also nuked my immune system, meaning my vaccination status doesn’t help much. Given the efficacy of the current flu vaccine, we need 80-90% compliance for herd immunity.

My kindergartener has leukemia; I really appreciate the care our school took to ensure that everyone she was placed in class with was vaccinated. Her immune system is fucked up enough; I don’t need extra funk to contend with.

My preschooler also has Leukemia. I am ever thankful for the teachers and other parents of her school for being so vigilant when it comes to illness so that most days she can be a normal 3 year old and go to school (looking cute in her little face mask she wears for added protection). My older daughter’s teacher is also wonderful at communicating to me when something is going around in her class. The onus is on my husband and I to make the decision if she’s safe or not, obviously, but it is amazing that she can have days of being normal.

Godspeed to both your children. My 9 year old cousin went through a 3 year bout of leukemia treatments about 6 years ago. He played high school football this year and is SCARY smart and absolutely the class favorite. I know the road you are traveling is so hard, but I want you to know that I am thinking about you and hoping that the finish line is close. Lots of ham hugs.

YES!! My 4 month old is currently at my mom’s house because my husband and I are home sick with the flu, and if she catches it, there’s a very, very, real chance she could die. A few weeks ago CNN reported that 7.3% of all US deaths that week were from the flu or flu complications. It’s serious stuff. I hate all this natural, I-read-it-on-the-interwebs-so-it’s-true, stick my nose in the air because I’m too “educated” for mainstream medicine crap. You get the flu shot so tiny babies, cancer patients, and the elderly don’t die of it. Just because you eat kale and crap like that doesn’t protect you or them. Get your dang flu shot.

LOVE THIS! I’m an ER nurse and first in line every year for the flu shot, haven’t had the flu once (though I do get the yearly local vomit bug every damn time). When physician associations come out and swear you absolutely can not get the flu from the shot because of its makeup, why is it logical to so many to make that leap to pharmaceutical conspiracy theory lies? If its flu season, you’re at risk.. if you get the flu after the shot, you were either already incubating it or you got food poisoning and are very misinformed about influenza. Its not a “stomach flu!”

I grew up always getting flu shots & w/ the exception of when I was self-employed (READ: “uninsured”), I always got flu shots in my adult life as well — BUT, fact of the matter is that w/ each & every flu shot, I definitely had a reaction, albeit a brief one — I’d get a death rattle in my chest & cough up phlegm for an hour or two, then symptoms resolved & I’d go back to being the same as I was prior to getting the shot — Logical Conclusion: of course a body reacts to crud introduced to it, & w/ everyone’s immune sys being different, YMMV as to the outcome.

In the fall of 2006, I had a bizarre reaction immediately following my flu shot — in addition to the little hacky stuff to be expected, my ears rang so bad that I became nauseous, & my eyes oozed a funky-looking white secretion from my tear ducts. <– that all lasted a couple of hours, but what hung on for weeks were spatial & mobility issues. To say that It freaked out the doctors who I was working for at the time (the one who gave me the shot saw it w/ her own eyes) would be an understatement — they & the few remaining employees who hadn't been dosed yet were not dosed from that batch*.

My immune sys was revved into overdrive & shit went downhill from there — w/in five months I was Dx’d w/ an autoimmune disease. I had one more flu shot, in 2007 on the recommendation of my neurologist I might add (the docs I still worked for required signed waivers by then), & that was the beginning of the end — I then had a major relapse & w/in two months, was no longer able to work.

So, my point of all of that is that just because *you* may not have ever had a reaction to a flu shot & gotten sick (yet), doesn’t mean that other people do not. My last two triggered something that was lying dormant, but I suppose that not getting the shots / getting the flu instead could / would have had the same end result — what I’m saying is that unless I already think of someone as a liar, I’m inclined to take their word for it if / when they say that they got the flu after getting a flu shot, & I respect their right to exercise the option to fore-go one.

*No, nothing was determined to be “wrong” w/ that batch, which my docs sent to the CDC.

This. So much. I think it was a Jezebel article that said it best (Yes, I know we hate jezebel…) sometime you’re just WRONG. It doesn’t matter how much you think you know, you don’t have the experience or the science to back it up. Shut up.

This is one of my most favorite comments I’ve ever read on GOMI. “All opinions are not created equal” is exactly what I’ve been trying to say for years in so many contexts. Thanks for summing it up so concisely.

What kills me is the way that she keeps invoking Sandy Hook as a strawman anytime someone points out a good argument. Someone legitimately points out that she hasn’t actually answered ANY of Dr Amy’s questions, and she goes “SANDY HOOK! DEAD CHILDREN! YOU ARE BULLYING ME!!!!!!”

I don’t think it’s childishness to protect one’s professional investment from illegitimate attackers. TFB is abusing the law for her own childish purposes; and she’s lying to ISPs, etc., to get them to play along with her hand. The SOB is using the best defense: A good offense.

Totally. TFB has been sending false, illegal take down notices to Dr. Amy’s web boats and a looking them into dropping her. This has caused her to have to move her site several times over the past couple of months at great personal cost and inconvenience. Plus, there’s the fact that Gina actually filed a lawsuit against Dr. Amy suing her for reposting the photo of her giving the middle finger even though her own lawyer admitted later that there was no way this case could win and ditched. So yeah, I think Dr. Amy is just tired of Gina’s crap and is just decided to play her at her own game in order to finally get her to stop the harassment.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The fact that TFB put her blog to private & Amy did not, speaks louder than her words. Dr. Amy didn’t need to send a pic of her middle finger to get her point across. (Not that I’m opposed to use of the middle finger, of course!)